Porn as Prevention?

Wear a condom, get tested and make sure you’re up to date with STIs. That was the message given by one of America’s most well known porn actors, Rod Daily, in 2012. Little did he know that less than a year later he would be diagnosed as HIV positive after seemingly contracting the virus working making adult films.

Now it’s September 2013 and he is looking much less upbeat at a press conference organised by the AIDS Health Foundation in Hollywood. He is fighting back the tears as he holds the hand of his girlfriend, who was also recently diagnosed as HIV positive. He is critical of the approach of porn film studios whose policy of testing every 2 weeks, he says, in insufficient and risks transmission of the virus between those working on adult films. He had been working on gay and straight films for approximately 2 years at an unnamed company before seroconverting. His girlfriend talks of the pressure to do things you might not want to, such as having unprotected sex, as ‘there is always someone younger and prettier’ that will come along and take the risk if you wont. Condoms should not be a choice, she states resolutely to TV cameras and journalists.

The press conference was organised partly to support the introduction of the California law – AB640 – which would have introduced a series of mandatory health and safety measures to porn sets and prohibit unprotected sex amongst porn actors. However, the law was rejected, possibly because of the fear that multi-million dollar porn companies would relocate as happened following the largely ineffectual legislation outlawing unprotected sex on porn sets in Los Angeles recently. Some porn actors have also complained that such legislation takes away freedom of choice and that they should be able to decide what they do with their bodies, not state legislators.

Clearly, it’s a divisive issue. The porn issue is a chicken and egg one in many ways – it is impossible to say whether changes in porn have resulted in changing sexual behaviour or whether sexual behaviour changes have influenced shifts in the nature of porn. But, what seems to be more likely is that porn can demonstrate options that we have sexually and these can impact whether we try certain types of sex, e.g. anal, protected/unprotected etc. One interesting conclusion from recent Norwegian research is that we should use porn as a way to promote safer sex, something that is rarely considered at the moment. One of the most obvious ways would be to use condoms in adult films to normalise their use and, hopefully, increase the likelihood that those consuming porn will have protected sex too.

What do you think on this controversial approach? Should unprotected sex be outlawed in the porn industry? Is prevention of HIV and STIs through the porn industry viable?